Result of the Study/Discussion: Role-play had been a success.

The students stressed the active

nature of the lectures. All of the student comments regarding the module were extremely positive.
Students actually like learning this way. The researcher was surprised by this finding. It took time for
role-play to grow on the students. The nervousness they had reported earlier in the semester had
completely dissipated. One questionnaire based on one role-play would have given the wrong
impression. It seems, from the research, that it is necessary to research role-play over a period of time in
order to observe these changes in student position. The positive response to the module in the final
questionnaire surprised me. The anxiety that students had reported feeling in relation to earlier role-
play in class had to a large extent vanished. The “anxiety filter” becomes lower in these circumstances
(Krashen, 1982). Students praised role-play as a learning method. They have become very conscious of
teaching and learning methods in the course of the semester. On a more somber note, some students
had left the module after the first or second lecture during the period when students can “shop around”
from module to module. I do wonder if some of them left because of role-play. If students are too
anxious even to try role-play, then no benefits are derived from it. There are different levels of
understanding involved in the process associated here with role-play: these levels can be seen in terms
of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Kennedy, 2007) and they help to accommodate the student voice within that
model. The CATs before the group work correspond to the basic level of Knowledge and
Comprehension; the group work itself and the role-play correspond to Application and Analysis and the
questionnaires after the role-play and the essays correspond to Synthesis and Evaluation. It is
encouraging to observe that Creativity/Synthesis has now been placed at the top of the pyramid in the
revised taxonomy (Anderson et al, in IACBE, 2014-2016 and Owen Wilson, 2016). The work involved in
role-play is profoundly creative and involves a process of understanding moving from one level to
another of the taxonomy. The CATs, role-play, questionnaires and essays can also be seen as
performances of understanding (TfU). We need to include the students’ own opinion of what they have
learned in both the TfU framework and Bloom’s Taxonomy. The student voice is a key component of the
research. If the student believes that s/he is learning and values that learning, we can expect him/her to
be more positive and to be more motivated. When triangulating data gathered from different research
tools, it is usual to expect similar outcomes that will prove a theory or hypothesis or justify a particular
intervention. The research tools showed a progression from initial skeptical reactions to role-play to a
gradual understanding and appreciation of it. In response to listening to the students’ voice the
researcher proposes to use more role-play, more CATs and questionnaires, and more group work in
future offerings of GA2019.

Conclusion: It is clear that there is a learning process involved in role-play. It takes time for students to
get used to it and to appreciate what they are getting out of it. The CAT before the group work, the
group work itself, the role-play, the subsequent questionnaire and crucially the essay all help the
student not only to reflect on the role-play but also to explore the “pre-text” itself. The research on
GA2019 became part of the teaching methodology. The researcher would include CATs and
questionnaires in future classroom situations. It is abundantly clear that if only one intervention was
introduced, one role-play for example, and one questionnaire, An incomplete picture from the data
would have been acquired. From the data gathered, the students reacted very positively to role-play
and reported having learned many different things from it. It is convincing that role-play would work
well in other literature lectures. Poetry, short stories, extracts from novels and plays could be used as
“pre-texts” and role-plays could be devised and performed based on these. Doing role-play is most
beneficial when accompanied by reflective exercises such as essay writing. Students reported having
learned about the stories through role-play. The learning outcomes of the module, listed earlier in this
article, were achieved: the students sorted out the themes of stories through having to apply the
meanings of fables to modern day situations; complex turning points in the stories were clarified by
acting out the plots as evidenced by the role-play on Sochraid Neil. Roleplay is one way in which reading
can become an active skill. It is necessary to make reading active to ensure that it will live on as a
fundamental part of student life.